OSWEGO, N.Y. — OSWEGO, N.Y. — The Nine Mile Point Nuclear Power Site, located to the east of the City of Oswego along Lake Ontario, is being considered as a potential location for New York’s first new nuclear reactor in decades. There’s bipartisan excitement for what experts describe as a sorely needed first step towards improving New York’s power grid options.

“It’s going to be a job creator, if we’re going to have one it’s clean energy, let’s have one in Oswego,” State Senator Chris Ryan said.

The senate democrat said he is looking forward to working with the assembly’s republican minority leader, Will Barclay, to lobby for Oswego to be chosen as the site for a new nuclear plant.

“I’m not usually in the habit of complimenting the governor, but I was pleased to see she is interested in building another nuclear facility in New York State,” Barclay said, “obviously I think Oswego County is very well suited for this.”

Governor Kathy Hochul has instructed state agencies to explore locations for a new nuclear power plant or to expand an existing plant with a new reactor. Professor Lindsay Anderson, Chair of the Department of Biological Engineering at Cornell University, said it’s a crucial project given the way the state’s energy demands are going to explode in years to come.

The state is working towards an energy grid that is carbon emission free by 2040 at the earliest. In pursuit of that mission, the state is looking to vastly increase power drawn from solar and windfarms; Professor Anderson said that these are worthy goals, but noted that her research shows the state will need 80 gigawatts of total dispatchable energy available to flip on during times of the year that solar and wind are less reliable. To put this in perspective, that’s equivalent to doubling the amount of energy the state currently has at it’s disposal.

Further complicating matters are projects that will demand staggering amounts of electricity. Chief among those is the Micron project; once all four fabrication sites are fully operational, the plant is projected to consumer more power than New Hampshire and Vermont combined.

The new nuclear site, according to Gov. Hochul, will produce no less than one gigawatt of power.

“A gigawatt of electricity is a lot but it’s not everything we need,” Anderson said, “it’s a start. It’s kind of an experiment as well right so what’s the right technology where is it going to go, how fast can we get it up?

Gov. Hochul has not set a deadline for identifying a site for the new nuclear plant, and once a location is chosen, construction is expected to take several years.